Plasma ion immersion is a standard technique in a semiconductor manufacturing process to introduce dopant elements into a substrate, such as a semiconductor wafer. One method of quantitatively measuring the performance of a plasma ion immersion process is to use Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS). While conventional SIMS can measure dopant and impurity concentrations in depth on a substrate, the inventors believe that the process may not be sufficiently sensitive to determine whether a plasma ion immersion process meets process control parameters. Another method of quantitatively measuring the performance of a plasma ion immersion process is to measure the post-anneal resistivity change of the conductive dopant elements. However, for plasma immersion of non-conductive dopants, such as carbon, there is no direct quantitative method of measuring the performance of the plasma ion implantation process.
Accordingly, the inventors have provided improved methods for quantitatively measuring the performance of a plasma immersion process.